29 replies to this topic

[acasely]

I had seen that a filament was beginning to detach from the Sun on 6th March, and decided to get in to the 38C heat and do some imaging. I took a sequence of 40 frames over 35 minutes in great seeing for my favourite solar timelapse so far. The prominence reaches about 250,000km high (Earth is about the size of the little hovering blob under the prominence's arch). Lots of plasma rain, movement in many directions, and solar wind buffeting around the ragged edge of the filament as the left edge detaches. Much of the remaining material drains down magnetic field lines to the right, and it had mostly dissipated within an hour or so. So much motion on a big scale, definitely my favourite animation I've made so far.

 

Skywatcher Evostar 100, Quark CS, ZWO ASI174MM, 40 x 20s, ~2600 frames per capture.

 

 

[Astrojensen]

That's just jaw-droppingly amazing! 

 

 

Clear skies!

Thomas, Denmark

[R Botero]

Wow, wow,wow!

[Spikey131]

Really, really nice work!

[rigel123]

Excellent animation!

[Averton]

Brilliant time lapse Andy - really well done!!!

You have to enjoy seeing as good as that and you made good use of it.

[MalVeauX]

Truly awesome!

 

Very best,

[philmor56]

That's a keeper for sure there Andy!

Well done! 

 

Cheers

[gstrumol]

Fantastic animation, truly!!     

 

Worthy of a "4  " rating!

[joshua_vise]

Amazing job!

 

How fast do you suppose the material is moving as it drains down the magnetic lines back into the sun?

[torsinadoc]

Excellent animation and image

[gstrumol]

It seems like you used the Chromosphere version of the Quark, and still got amazing prominence images. So why do they sell a prominence version? Every Quark I've seen here has been with CS version. 

[rachnoman]

Great capture and processing. Thanks for sharing your good work!.

[Classic8]

Wow, that's really cool! 

[snommisbor]

[MarlinS]

Incredible!!! Best Prom Animation I’ve seen!!! Strong work!!! A high bar for us novices!!! Can’t wait to get into animation. Thanks for sharing.

[sk9.florida]

what a feast to the eyes!! amazingly captures. thank you for sharing, simply superb!!

[Classic8]

Amazing job!

 

How fast do you suppose the material is moving as it drains down the magnetic lines back into the sun?

Interesting question, I'd like to know that too. If we knew how big the prominence was, maybe based on what percent of the sun's surface is visible in the image, then use the total time elapsed, you would know approximately how fast it was going.

[yuzameh]

Well, that's an apod!  Animated picture of the day!

[acasely]

Aw thank you very much for all the kind comments! Will reply to a couple of questions shortly

[wxcloud]

  WOW! 

[BYoesle]

Nice Andy 

[davidpitre]

Excuse my ignorance. But each of your frames was just a single frame, not a stacked frame, correct?

[acasely]

It seems like you used the Chromosphere version of the Quark, and still got amazing prominence images. So why do they sell a prominence version? Every Quark I've seen here has been with CS version. 

I can't comment directly, but one of the top imagers on this forum (MalVeauX) has commented on it elsewhere, and a I suspect he is right - the logic is sound that the better the etalon (narrower bandpass) the better contrast the prominences will be so long as it's well tuned, and the Quark CS version has a narrower bandpass than the Quark Prom. The images will be dimmer visually, but with a reasonable imaging camera, that doesn't matter. For reference, I image prominences at ~220-240 gain and 2.5-3ms exposure with my Quark CS, and on the live view the prominences are not visually spectacular, often nearly invisible. I use the "screen adjustment" tools in Firecapture to help with framing the prom during capture. The hardest work is getting or constructing a decent flat field for the frame, to smooth the asymmetric glare from the bright main disc of the Sun.

 

A single raw frame (each video sequence for each processed frame in the GIF has ~2600 raw frames): 

 

And stretched in PS to show what's visible in a single frame:

Edited by acasely, 19 March 2023 - 08:59 PM.

[acasely]

Amazing job!

 

How fast do you suppose the material is moving as it drains down the magnetic lines back into the sun?

 

 

Interesting question, I'd like to know that too. If we knew how big the prominence was, maybe based on what percent of the sun's surface is visible in the image, then use the total time elapsed, you would know approximately how fast it was going.

Good questions! I've done some back-of-the envelope calculations on my image. It assumes that the image scale is ~223km per pixel, so Earth would be ~57 pixels wide if it were imaged from this distance, and my full-disk sun mosaics come out around 6145 pixels diameter or so. It also assumed that all the motion is perpendicular to our line of sight, so these speeds are minimum values, some speeds could be quite a bit higher.

 

A droplet on the left side of the arch falling back towards the Sun: 99pixels (22058km) in 3.4min = 108km/s

 

A bright blob rising quickly as the left side disconnects: 63px in 4.2min = 56km/s

 

Some material rising in the diffuse cloud at upper left: 112px in 5.9min = 71km/s

 

a faint streamer cutting across the arch towards the Sun about mid-sequence: 88px in 2.6min = 126km/s

Two different blobs in the tight streamer flowing down to the Sun along the magnetic field lines: 

150px in 4.2min = 133km/s
113px in 3.6min = 117km/s

 

Some plasma rain near the foot of the tight bright stream: 107px in 3.4min = 117km/s

 

For comparison the ISS travels at 7.7km/s, and a passenger plane at 0.25km/s!